Monday, September 06, 2010

SCHOOL DAZE

Victor Davis Hanson , who has spent some time in academia, says that we are being "ruled by professors". He goes on to describe lessons he has learned from his association with the ivory tower:

First was the false knowledge — odd for an institution devoted to free inquiry. The university runs like a 13th-century church in which the heliocentric maverick is a mortal sinner. So too on campus the Rosenbergs never spied. Alger Hiss was a martyr. Mao killed only a few who needed killing (see Anita Dunn on that one).

Che was not a murderous thug, but a hair-in-the-wind carefree motorcyclist. Minorities supposedly died proportionally higher in Vietnam — as they supposedly do now in Iraq and Afghanistan. Women are underrepresented as both undergraduates and as humanities graduate students. Anyone with an accented name obviously had picked grapes or was denied voting rights. Adlai Stevenson was an American saint, even more so than George McGovern. Only the unhinged even discussed doubts about global warming. Don’t question any of the above; it was all gospel — as we see now in D.C., from Keynes to Gorism to Cordoba as the beacon of Islamic tolerance during the Inquisition. (Doubt any of that, and that laid-back elbow-patched joking prof who told the class “Call me Bill,” in a flash, Gollum like, turned into a snarling jackal, screaming, “I am Doctor Jones, with important publications on climate change and a doctorate from Berkeley! How dare you question me!”)

The above is just a tidbit from a great piece, make sure you read it all. Hanson goes on to talk in detail about the 'mock heroics' of the academic elite and their general cluelessness about the material world.

Like Hanson, I have spent much of my adult life in the bizarro world of academia. And, like Alice in Wonderland, I have noted over my years at various institutions that things have only gotten "curioser and curiouser" as the intellectuals in these citadels of supposed learning grew ever more out of touch with the real world. Yet I have chosen to remain in this environment because I love to teach.

Perhaps I am a bit mad.

[Alice: But I don't want to go among mad people.The Cat: Oh, you can't help that. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.Alice: How do you know I'm mad?The Cat: You must be. Or you wouldn't have come here.]

I suppose, being a psychiatrist, I should have anticipated that I would spend a considerable amount of time among mad people..., but sometimes I can't help but think that the physiologically insane people that I deal with in my profession are far less intellectually and morally delusional than the elitist professors who think they know it all.

What goes on these days in many of our universities and colleges is a real travesty. If we continue to support and enable these so-called intellectuals who are undermining our childrens' rational faculties and send money to the universities that employ them, then we will have lost yet another generation to the mindless and vacuous postmodern political left.

Recall back a few posts where I discussed the intellectual and ethical strategies that have fueled the socialist/communist/collectivist revival in this country, and you will understand how important it is that we support diversity on our campuses--but in this case, I am not talking about mlticultural diversity (which means nothing), but the diversity of ideas that is necessary for true academic freedom. Right now, the left has a stranglehold on what ideas are permitted and taught to our children; and, as we have seen repeatedly, the last thing they want is to have any of their precious dogmas challenged.

Hiding behind the concept of "academic freedom", these academic purveyors of thought oppression have gained control of education in this country. The first step in dealing with this situation is to reconsider the notion of tenure and put an end to the lack of real-world consequences for academic activities. Once upon a time, tenure may have encouraged new ideas and stimulated vigorous, and even unconventional debate, but now the tenured professoriate all march in intellectual lock-step and make sure that no one with a different opinion ever gets into their elite club or rocks their club boat.

Next, the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of those overly-prized qualities of "diversity" and "multiculturalism" must be thoroughly and painstakingly exposed for what they are: the politically correct posturings of incompetent social engineers who wish to impose their own mediocrity on all aspects of society. These intellectual 'giants' only champion a new kind of oppression (the oppression of the 'competent') under the benign guise of "political correctness". If your ideas merely hurt their feelings, you can be sent to their gulags.

It is time to begin the painful task of treating this "hardening of the intellectual arteries"; this scholarly daze, that has led to madness and dementia on our college campuses. Like end-stage Alzheimer's, soon the professoriate will no longer be able to even understand or respond to any aspect of the real world and will dwell only in the wild imaginings of their squalid little circumscribed minds.

Hanson at the end of the piece quoted above:

I could go on, but you get the picture about the strange habits that arise when you ensure someone lifelong employment, institutionalize unaccountability and groupspeak, and create artificial hierarchies of respect that are not necessarily earned by either teaching excellence, scholarship, or value to the community. After the pension meltdown, a great reckoning is coming to academia and it won’t be pretty.

Reality can be a bitch, particularly if you've been living in a bubble of denial; and soon the professors that think they rule us are going to come face to face with the real world--and I don't think they will survive the experience.